TheSelous Scouts was a unit of
some 1000men and formed part of the
Rhodesian Special Forces which included the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS)
and Grey’s Scouts (a horse-mounted infantry patrol unit of approximately 200men). The unit took its name
from Frederick Selous, a white hunter and explorer, a friend of Cecil Rhodes who
was involved in much of the exploration and pacification of the territory which
became Rhodesia. Selous remains to this day something of a heroic figure among
whites in southern Africa.

The Scouts were formed soon after the black nationalist guerrilla
forces began launching increasingly effective raids into Rhodesian territory
from the sanctuary of neighboring Zambia and Mozambique in the 1970s. The force
was recruited from all races in Rhodesia but as time passed more and more black
soldiers were brought into the organization because of the specialized nature of
the tasks it had to perform.

Colonel
Reid-Daly, who had served with the SAS in the Malayan Emergency, commanded the
Selous Scouts and all his officers were white. Initially, most were Rhodesians
but one or two American and British officers joined the unit bringing

with
them experience gained in Vietnam and Northern Ireland. The unit was based in
Inkomo Barracks in Salisbury but there was also a field training camp located at
Wafa Wafa near Kamba.

The
training that new recruits received was generally considered to be particularly
rigorous, even by SAS standards, and the methods used achieved a remarkable
degree of realism. Much emphasis was placed on preparing men to survive in small
groups in the arduous physical circumstances in which they would be required to
conduct operations.

While the
conventional units of the security forces were well-trained and highly-skilled
in bringing the enemy to battle it became crucial that accurate intelligence
should be acquired so that these forces, usually air or helicopter borne, could
be deployed in the right place at the right time. The provision of this
intelligence was the task of the Selous Scouts. As a ‘combat-tracker’ unit
their role was to locate the enemy, ascertain his strengths and intentions and
to pass this information back.

In
all counter-insurgency operations a major problem for the security forces centers
on the question of how to move into an area of insurgent activityundetected.
Unusual transport movement by road or using aircraft (especially helicopters)
always warns the enemy. Even unusual movements of troops on foot are often
detected. The Selous Scouts were trained to live for extended periods without
reliance on any form of transport or the need for resupply. In their
reconnaissance role they operated in very small groups (‘sticks’ as they
were called) of four to five men which further enhanced their ability to remain
undetected.

‘Sticks’
would establish observation posts in known areas of enemy activity and they
would remain there, completely self-contained, for long periods of time always
reporting back, by radio, information on guerrilla movements which would be
acted on by the more conventional units of the security forces.

Tracking
and disguise

Many
of the officers and men of the Selous Scouts, coming as they did from rural
surroundings in Rhodesia, were past masters in the hunting of wild and game
animals. It was a com­paratively simple matter for them to switch to tracking
groups of enemy and they achieved a high success rate. It was not unknown for
the Scouts to follow the tracks of an enemy group for anything up to a week,
moving only in the morning and evening when the slanting rays of the sun tended
to highlight the minute signs of human movement for which they were looking.

Another method
of gleaning intelligence on the enemy’s activity used by the Selous Scouts was
to dispatch small groups of men into remote and often hostile areas disguised as
guerrillas. They would, in this way, make contact with village communities and
attempt to glean snippets of information on enemy movements, intended targets
and rendezvous. This type of clandestine operation was often carried to its
logical conclusion when careful training enabled ‘sticks’ of men in the
guise of guerrillas actually to penetrate enemy camps and thereby neutralize a
complete enemy group.

Counter-measures

Toward
the end of the war in the late 1970s,
when the guerrillas had
succeeded in winning friends or pressuring unwilling supporters in the villages
to provide them with information on security force movements, life for the
Selous Scouts became more and more difficult. Villagers would, themselves,
patrol the country around their homes in an attempt to locate the whereabouts of
the security forces. These guerrilla helpers were known as majubis
and many were young boys who would
in any case normally be out on the hills tending the herds of cattle. If in

their wandering they discovered
an observation post they would deliberately move their herd right onto the
Scouts’ position and thereby pinpoint the exact location of the security force
patrol. These helpers also gave false information to the patrols in order to
conceal the intentions of the guerrilla forces.

Another
ploy by the guerrillas designed to fox the Scouts was to change their clothing
whilst out on patrol. A group of guerrillas might be seen to enter a village
carrying weapons and wearing uniforms. By concealing their arms and exchanging
their camouflaged shirts for white or red ones they became extremely difficult
to identify from a distant observation
post. On occasion guerrillas were known to begin an operation wearing several
layers of different colored clothing.

Because of the
inevitable secrecy which shrouded their activities the Selous Scouts became the
object of much curiosity during the war. Their enemies depicted them as a gang
of bandits and ruffians while their sup­porters were prone to see them as a
group of experts providing the eyes and ears of the main body of the security
forces.

(END)

***NOTE***
Source for this article was obtained from the book: WAR IN PEACE: CONVENTIONAL
AND GUERRILLA WARFARE SINCE 1945. printed 1982, author Major F. A. Godfrey MC.